Liz Jensen - The Rapture

‘Our names and faces and crimes have been broadcast to the whole nation. With your wheelchair, and the size of that news screen over there, I don’t imagine we’ll stay unnoticed for long.’

‘So let’s stay here and drown!’ offers Bethany cheerily. ‘We could all die together, like a family!’

I snap open the mobile. ‘I’ll try Ned again. If we can get a connection, we’ll know where they are, at least. And we can tell them we’ve arrived. They’ll have left the press conference by now, right?’ Frazer Melville nods. I dial but can’t get through. All around us, yellow-uniformed ushers are shepherding people towards the footbridge that leads to the wide concourse and the stadium. As I punch at the phone again, the TV shows more images of traffic and air chaos, then rejoins a live link to Buried Hope Alpha. In the pitch darkness of a North Sea afternoon the platform stands in a pool of light, its brightness pulsing outwards into the sky and across the churning ocean. An enchanted stronghold. The site controller, Lars Axelsen, is taking questions from a cluster of anoraked journalists who have flown out for a hastily arranged press briefing. It’s clearly freezing out there. Far below them, the sea shifts blackly. I dial again: still no connection. Axelsen and another Traxorac official say there is no indication of unusual activity on or below the seabed. The questions continue. I turn the volume down and leave the men goldfishing, the phone clamped hard against my ear. I’m failing to connect, but I can’t accept it. Lars Axelsen is showing the sub-sea robot Traxorac used to bring up underwater pictures of the drill-pipe, and indicating that the pictures it took show everything to be normal.

I’m dialling again when there’s a gasp from the back seat. I swing round. Bethany is shuddering, her eyes and nostrils flared wide. ‘It’s started!’ she whispers. ‘I can feel it!’ Her breathing is odd: laboured and ragged. She’s struggling to gulp huge mouthfuls of air.

‘Bethany?’ But she’s elsewhere. She has doubled up sharply as though something has jabbed her in the stomach. Her wrists are still tied together, but she grabs her head in both hands as if to protect it while her body bucks in frantic spasms. ‘Oh God,’ I murmur. ‘Please, Bethany. Not now.’

‘I’ll get her,’ says Frazer Melville. He leaps out. Bethany’s head jack-knifes back and she emits a high unworldly scream, like the hiss of a pressure cooker, her eyes rolling upward to reveal the bloodshot whites. Then she buckles again, rocking the whole car with her convulsions. I’m aware that Frazer Melville has pulled open the back door and is trying to pin her down with his weight. That they’re struggling on the back seat, half in and half out of the car. From the corner of my eye I see one of the ushers noticing the car’s movement. Signalling to his colleague, he points in our direction, then starts making his way over, weaving his narrow body between the parked vehicles. He’s young and big-boned, but as skinny as a colt: his uniform hangs loose. By now Frazer Melville has somehow managed to push Bethany’s feet to the floor and wrench her into a sitting position, then shove himself in next to her and slam the car door so they are trapped together on the back seat.

‘Quick, undo her wrists,’ I urge. The young usher is closing in. Swiftly, Frazer Melville frees them.

Peering into the car, the youth calls anxiously: ‘Everything OK there?’

Bethany’s spasms have now quietened to a tremble. Opening her mouth in a wide 0, she takes a huge gasp of air and swallows it down.

‘Fine,’ I say, rolling the window down a fraction. ‘Just one excited girl!’ But he looks wary. He can see something’s wrong. Maybe he’s recognised us from the news.

Bethany’s lips, which have turned completely grey, start to move. She’s trying to say something. She coughs. ‘I felt it start,’ she chokes. Her voice is so faint and distant it could be a ghost’s.

Frazer Melville is staring past her, at one of the huge TV screens on the stadium’s outer concourse. ‘She’s right,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘Look.’

On Buried Hope Alpha, the journalists are getting to their feet and shouting in alarm. Something has unsettled them. Something we can’t see.

‘I’m Calum. I’m on the stadium team,’ says the young usher. He isn’t giving up. ‘Do you need a doctor?’

‘She’s fine, thanks, Calum. We’re just watching the news,’ I say weakly, pointing at the screen. ‘Something’s happening.’

And it is. Suddenly, the whole picture trembles, as though being vibrated. Lars Axelsen grabs a chair to steady himself, but he’s jolted viciously in the other direction, hurled out of view like a flung cushion. The camera zooms out to a wide-shot, judders epileptically, then somersaults. It must have crashed to the floor. You see inverted feet, running. There are incoherent shouts. Then there’s a thud. Calum’s eyes widen.

‘A pre-shock,’ murmurs Frazer Melville.

A new image, taken from the air, now shows the entire lit-up rig bouncing furiously from left to right. Then it’s motionless again. But a second later, slowly and languorously, the angle of the whole edifice shifts, tilting sideways until it’s at an impossible, gravity-defying pitch. Then with the delicate, almost balletic elegance of a camel getting to its knees, the huge structure begins to sink into the surrounding sea. There’s a fierce flare of orange and then the lights extinguish one by one. After that everything happens almost too rapidly to register. Within the space of two seconds the entire rig has vanished, sucked silently beneath the waves.

Then darkness. It’s as if it had never been.

‘I told you,’ whispers Bethany. ‘I told you. It’s started.’

The link lost, the screen flutters and goes blank. Before I can stop her, Bethany has seen her opportunity. She grabs Calum’s uniformed arm through the window and pulls him close, bringing his ear up to her mouth. He recoils from her grip, but she clings on to his sleeve. ‘Your big day’s arrived!’ she croaks hoarsely. ‘Are you Rapture ready? ’ And she breaks into a foul laugh.

In that instant, I can see he has recognised her. Wrenching himself away, the young usher darts off through the parked cars, shouting into his headset.

‘Well, thank you, Bethany,’ sighs Frazer Melville. ‘I guess there is no plan B.’

He’s right. Yellow-clad ushers are appearing from all directions but there’s nowhere to run. Especially for someone who can’t even walk. It isn’t even worth discussing.

‘If that was a pre-shock, how long have we got left?’ I ask him, trying to keep my voice level. The pins and needles seethe in my legs.

‘No telling. But I’d say an hour at most. It will move at the speed of a jumbo jet.’ His voice is so quiet and calm that it’s almost reassuring. ‘From what I’ve seen of the structure of the hydrate layer, and what’s beneath, the next landslide will be catastrophic. A tsunami’s propagation velocity is equal to the square root of the acceleration of gravity times the depth of the water.’

I swallow. My throat is parched. ‘Is that how a physicist says goodbye?’

He shuts his eyes and doesn’t speak. I can feel a long desperate howl welling inside me. Seconds later five ushers have formed a ring around the car. From behind them a woman’s voice calls out, high and shrill as an alarm system, ‘Over there, in the grey Nissan! It’s that girl they’re looking for! Bethany Krall! She’s got the Devil in her, I saw it on TV!’

A throng of people is gathering around us. Most are men, and the expression on their faces covers the full range from fear to disbelief to mistrust to menace to rage. Some are shouting abuse. Swiftly, I clunk the doors locked. Terror makes a clenched fist of my throat: I try to swallow but I can’t. Frazer Melville is staring straight ahead. ‘This way!’ someone yells. More faces peer in, some thrust right up against the front windscreen. Hands hammer on the roof of the car, clamouring for us to open the doors. ‘Over here! The girl’s in the car!’ ‘Bethany Krall.’ ‘Leonard Krall’s daughter. Abducted.’ A tall security guard with a broad handsome face materialises, and signals to the onlookers to stay clear of the car. Reluctantly, they move back. The guard positions himself in the empty parking space next to us, legs apart, arms braced, but makes no eye contact. It seems he’s waiting for backup. He looks confident and professional: a man who enjoys his job because he’s good at it. Not that Bethany’s aware of him. She has netted her fingers over her stubbled head and she’s rocking back and forth like a distraught baby trapped in the prison of its cot, her face and neck sequined with sweat.